(Part 2) Best historical latin america biographies according to redditors

I would also add Carlos Rangel's The Latin Americans: Their Love-Hate Relationship with the United States, known in Spanish as "Del Buen Salvaje al Buen Revolucionario". I would say that this book is the real counterweight of Open Veins of Latin America. In fact, Guide for the Perfect Latin American Idiot directly borrows from Carlos Rangel, as well as acknowledging his contribution to the book.

The Dictator's Shadow is a great book written by Heraldo Munoz, a bureaucrat under Allende who survived that fascist asshole's reign.

Amazon sells her book

Also:

> The representatives of U.S. government agencies, Castillo says, seemed amused by what had happened to Ortiz. Castillo said the men jokingly asked him "if Dianna Ortiz had been good at sex," and thought he might actually be the American whom Ortiz says participated in her rape and torture.

> Castillo, who was stationed in Central America and worked frequently in Guatemala from 1985 to 1990, says he is not "Alejandro," the person named by Ortiz as her attacker. Ortiz, shown a photograph of Castillo, agrees that he's not. But Castillo, in his statement and recent interviews with the National Catholic Reporter, says he and other DEA agents have important information about the role the drug agency and the CIA played in crimes in Guatemala.

The Conquest Of New Spain - by Bernal Diaz - Diaz was one of the officers under Cortez and the story of his real life experiences in encountering a 'new world' read like a 'high fantasy' novel. In fact, some of his experiences were borrowed by novel writers and later used in their stories - most notably by J.R.R. Tolkien, and Robert E. Howard.

You might also be interested in The Travels - by Marco Polo - he traveled quite extensively through Asia during the late 13th century - and his writing was one of the sources which influenced later explorers like Christopher Columbus.

I remember reading a book about this in college:

http://www.amazon.com/Salvador-Witness-Life-Calling-Donovan/dp/157075604X

They also made a movie about it called "Salvador" with James Woods.

Let me try it this way. I suggest you read Hugo!: The Hugo Chavez Story from Mud Hut to Perpetual Revolution which unlike your suggestion, doesn't based the majority of its "unbiased" narrative on two anti-Chavez ex-generals involved in the coup. Once you read it, you can get back to me. Unless that is too much work for you.

This book seems to be the starting point to understand southamerican politic history:

http://www.amazon.com/Open-Veins-Latin-America-Centuries-ebook/dp/B009AC31TG/ref=la_B000AP701M_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1412254480&sr=1-1

This is a great Book by Heraldo Muñoz

http://www.amazon.com/Dictators-Shadow-Under-Augusto-Pinochet-ebook/dp/B0097D7FSQ/ref=la_B000ARBF4S_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1412254449&sr=1-1

Maybe you should ask some specific questions so people here could share their views.

In a nutshell, Chilean society is quite divided by the events related to Pinochet's dictatorship: Supporters, Critics, and people who couldn't care less about it and want desperately to move on.

The only decent source of good political articles is Ciper (On the left side of things). Economics:Diario Financiero (on the right...)

My personal view, is that the privatizacion of basic services like electricity, water, phone has been negative in the long run, but in a way it was unavoidable. Privatizations in general seemed to help to improve the quality of service in some cases, and helped the economy. The problem is that we don't seem to be very good with our anti monopoly regulations, so when some company gets big, they can be very soon seting the rules of the whole industry . (it happens a lot in retail).

The biggest fiasco for me, has been our pension system: AFP's.
They are being promoted as a wonderful system all around the world, but it's full of holes and problems: Our society has a huge concentration of wealth. 70% of our society earns less than U$20.000 a year, so they can't have really the possibility of extra savings. AFP's are designed to work around big saving investments, people from that 70% of the society will NEVER reach the number they require to have a minimal decent pension. AFP's can lose your money in their investemts but they take their yearly fee anyway ("Comisions"), so they never lose.

The current educational reforms are the result of what it was to have 30 years of private education which increased the gap between classes, because good education was available to the people who could afford it, so it didn't really promoted better opportunities, and a lot of politicians got rich thanks to it (Ironically, a good number of them, from the left wing).

We shouldn't get back to a system where everything is state regulated, but that won't happen anyway. The two biggest political blocks from the left and right are quite fine with out actual system.


Finally I must say that Australian wine is really nice too.
and a word of advice: bring some Vegemite and TimTams.
There's nothing like it over here.

Una serie muy bien llevada y con lo básico es la de

Biografía del Poder tiene lo básico de cardenas y todos los presidentes.

Este de Ricardo Pérez Montfort, esta bastante completo, solo que como otros autores de izquierda olvida los capítulos negros o los deja de lado, como el fraude de 1940 y como se hizo de propiedades.

Un libro que habla de él, desde una perspectiva no tan recatada, es Memorias de Manual N. Santos, tiene algunas cosas que puedes llamar fantasias, pero que si le buscas un poco, encuentras las verdades que le pasaron.

Busca también la Historia Gráfica de la Revolución Méxicana de los Casasola, tiene interesantes cosas.

And another one: Castro, by Reinhard Kleist. Written mostly from the POV of a German journalist, who accompanied the Cuban revolution, this comic spans many decades of Castro's life.

Amazon link

A few sample pages, text in German

Bullshit.

He criticized the US in 1964 for it's mistreatment of African Americans when he visited the UN HQ. He was praised in a speech by Malcolm X during that same visit. His personal bodyguard was a loyal Black-Cuban, Harry "Pombo" Villegas.

Here's the text of his 1964 speech at the United Nations: Full Speech, it can also be found in this book: Amazon link

My point is, you can't conclude that he was a racist because of a couple of quotes attributed to him.

Here are all the local Amazon links I could find:


amazon.co.uk

amazon.ca

amazon.com.au

amazon.in

amazon.com.mx

amazon.de

amazon.it

amazon.es

amazon.com.br

amazon.nl

amazon.co.jp

amazon.fr

Beep bloop. I'm a bot to convert Amazon ebook links to local Amazon sites.
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Che biography graphic novel:-

https://www.amazon.com/Che-Graphic-Biography-Spain-Rodriguez/dp/1844671682/ref=nodl_

Castro biography graphic novel:-

https://www.amazon.com/Castro-Graphic-Novel-Reinhard-Kleist/dp/1551525941/ref=nodl_

http://www.amazon.com/Chile-September-Anthology-Reflections-Radical/dp/1920888446/ref=pd_sim_b2

Things I Like About America - Poe Ballentine.

I read this after reading some of his short stories in a literary magazine and I loved it. It's a quick read made of a bunch of essays. He writes funny interesting prose. I didn't care for the novel I read, but I should reread it.

I'll have to look up Dan Carlin as I've not heard of him. I did find out today that I can bring three books with me to detox. Yay! I'm currently reading Che (I try to stay clear of politics but love the history of it) and am glad that I can bring this along to distract me. The book is long and I'll probably takes notes as usual so this will give me something to do in my free time.

Another disturbingly informative book, The Flight, from the perspective of a solider who "disappeared" live political dissidents.

This might sound weird, but Che Guevara is a good example of this. Check out The Motorcycle Diaries to see him as a medical student on a road trip through South America with his buddy and then follow it up with Reminiscences of the Cuban Revolution to see him as a young guerilla during the Cuban Revolution, and finally check out The Bolivian Diary which chronicles his 1966-67 guerilla campaign in Bolivia which ultimately ended with his capture and death.